When you think about volunteering at the Food Bank, you probably think about food sorting, packing hampers, and distributing food. Did you know that we have volunteers helping us with cybersecurity, community policing and administrative work?
Peter and Daniel are some of our most unique and committed volunteers at the Greater Vancouver Food Bank. They both retired at the end of 2018 and they knew they wanted to spend their retirement in Vancouver. Peter loves winter sports, so Vancouver was an obvious choice.
Peter is our rock star volunteer on the food sort team who has spent more than 300 hours with us since July 2020. Every time we work with Peter, we laugh more, and the days go by faster. Our volunteers often find interesting things in the donation totes. “I don’t even know where to begin,” Peter chuckled, “the oldest can of food I found was probably around 2005, but I know someone found a can that was from the ’60s. Sometimes people even donate half a packet of something, or a half used bag of something. I guess it’s the thought that counts but we can’t use the food because it’s no longer safe to distribute to our clients.”
Daniel and Peter in the GVFB warehouse
A couple of months after Peter started volunteering in the warehouse, Peter noticed that we needed more people to operate our electric pallet jacks, so he signed up for the training and obtained his certification, just for us. Meanwhile, Daniel was enjoying his retirement without any commitments, until one day when Peter heard that we were re-vamping our cybersecurity system and procedures. He asked Daniel to support us, with his experience as a Chief Information Officer at a large corporation before he retired.
Daniel jumped onboard right away and has been working with our IT Manager ever since. When we asked Daniel why he likes volunteering at the Food Bank he said, “It’s always interesting to understand how someone else runs their operation. I really didn’t have any idea how the Food Bank operated, but now I’ve got a much better idea about what you do and how extensive your operation is.”
Thank you, Peter and Daniel, for being our volunteer power couple!
If you have any special skills or knowledge you think would benefit the Greater Vancouver Food Bank, we encourage you to email [email protected] to start the conversation!
